Cognitive Scientist Rethinks Boundaries of Being

Event is Part of Center for Values Lecture Series on Human Enhancement

Oct. 11, 2010

“As our worlds become smarter, and get to know us better and better,” writes cognitive scientist Andy Clark, “it becomes harder and harder to say where the world stops and the person begins.”

What role does one’s environment plays in shaping the nature of conscious experience?

Clark, the chair of logic and metaphysics at Edinburgh University, will discuss this and other related topics in his lecture, “Natural-born Cyborgs? Reflections on Bodies, Minds and Human Enhancement,” on Wednesday, Oct. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in Davidson Auditorium in the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas.

This event is part of UT Dallas’ “Incite Your Curiosity: Exploring Human Enhancement” lectures, presented by the Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Clark is a philosopher of the mind whose research interests include robotics and artificial life, the cognitive role of human-built structures, specialization and interactive dynamics in neural systems and the interplay between language, thought, socio-technological scaffolding and action.

Clark is the author of Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension; and Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. Currently, he is working on predictive coding models of neural function. Clark holds a BA and DPhil from the University of Sterling, United Kingdom.